Salvation: Secret Apocalypse Book 5 (A Secret Apocalypse Story) (22 page)

The man in the gas mask makes his way back over to me.

I need to keep
him talking. He needs to be closer. “What is your name?” I ask.

“My name is
irrelevant,” he answers. “I am irrelevant.”

“Tariq?” I ask.
“Lucifer? What the hell is your name!?”

“I lost my name.
A long time ago. I have stopped looking for it. You should stop looking as
well.”

He is getting
closer.

“You crazy son
of a bitch. It was you at the outpost. You killed all those soldiers! You tried
to kill Maria! We should’ve listened to that dying soldier. We should never
have let you out of that storage closet. We should never have untied you!”

“And your friend
would have died. He would have bled to death. Is that what you want?”

He continues
walking towards me, and he has a point. Ben would’ve died if he hadn’t saved
his life.

I realize now he
was doing this to buy our trust.

Trust is a
dangerous thing. A deadly thing.

“For every
action,” he says. “There is a reaction. There is a consequence. A butterfly
flaps its wings. A pebble is dropped in the ocean. A child learns about a
vengeful God. Don’t you see?”

He is close now.
He kneels down in front of me because he doesn’t see me as a threat. He doesn’t
know I have a hunting knife in my hands, behind my back.

And when he
says, ‘don’t you see’, the only thing I can see is my own reflection in the
black goggles of his mask.

“The only thing
I see is a psychopath,” I say. “You won’t kill Maria. I stopped you once
before. And I’m stopping you right now. You won’t kill Maria.”

And now all I
see is my own reflection in the black goggles and I see the knife appear from
behind my back.

I move fast,
before he can react, before he can stop me. I stick the knife in his gut and I
twist the handle.

His black,
lifeless eyes stare at me and I cannot tell if he feels pain.

And he really
does not fear death.

He grabs the
knife handle, wrapping his hand around mine. “You are right. I will not kill Maria.”

He slides the
knife deeper into his gut and he pushes me back against the wall.

And now I am one
hundred percent convinced that he does not feel pain. And maybe he really is a
God. Maybe he really is the Angel of Death.

He stands up and
removes the knife from his gut and throws the knife away.

“Not yet,” he
says. “Not yet.”

The man in the
gas mask turns away from me and walks out of the morgue.

I pick up the knife and wipe the blood on my jeans. I need to finish this. I
need to kill this bastard like I should’ve killed him.

I stand on shaky
legs. My vision narrows and darkens and the whole world tilts on its axis. I
lean against the wall for support and I take a few deep breaths to regain my
composure. I ignore the fever that has racked my body. I ignore the aching of
my joints. I ignore the fact there is a time-release nano-swarm flowing through
my veins and my arteries and every single one of my blood vessels.

I ignore the
fact that I have forty-five minutes left.

I move slowly
through the morgue, following the blood trail between the stainless steel
autopsy tables.

On some of the
tables are hacked up bodies. They could be infected. They could be innocent
people. Or both. One particular body has its chest sliced open and ripped open,
its rib cage broken apart. All of its vital organs are missing.

This could’ve
been me.

I shudder at the
thought and I follow the blood trail out of the morgue and into another room. A
large, industrial sized room.

The first thing
I notice is the cold. I can see my breath in front of my face. The air stings
my skin.

This room is so
damn cold.

And I lose the
blood trail.

Actually, it’s
not that I lose the blood trail. But I can no longer see the trail on the floor
because the floor is stained and splattered with an ocean of blood.

There is blood
all over the tiled floor. The tiled walls. And the tiled ceiling.

There is blood
in between the gaps in the tiles.

There is blood
everywhere.

For a second I
feel like I’m inside a slaughterhouse, and I’m probably feeling this way
because I
am
inside a slaughterhouse.

An abattoir.

Hunks of meat
are hanging from chains that hang from the ceiling. Row after row. Each chain
has a massive hook attached to the end of it. And these hooks are being used to
pierce the hunks of meat.

But they are not
just hunks of meat. They are human bodies. Bodies that are mutilated and
butchered and infected. Again, some of them might not be infected but it is
damn near impossible to tell. Some of the chains are rattling and some of the
bodies are swaying back and forth. I see movement in the corner of my eye. One
of the bodies is flailing about.

The body has
been impaled through its chest with the hook. It is hanging from the chain,
hanging from the tiled ceiling.

And it is
moving.

It is dead yet
alive.

It is reaching
out for me.

How many more
bodies are infected? How many more bodies are dead and alive?

I need to make
sure I keep my distance from each body, from each chain, from each hunk of
meat. I stick to the middle of the room. The center aisle. But I can’t stop
staring at the infected person. He has seen me and he is reaching out for me.
It is kicking its legs.

The chain
rattles.

A door slamming
shut gets my attention and brings my focus back. The noise came from the far
end of the room.

I make my way
slowly, carefully, down the center aisle. More and more bodies spring to life.
More and more bodies are reaching out for me.

The infected are
secured with a hook through their chest and several other chains. Another hook
is placed strategically, with surgical accuracy, through their skull. This hook
has not pierced their brain, but if they move far enough, if they fall, if they
somehow get free from their chains and the hook through their chest, the hook
through their head will tear the brain apart. Kind of like a dead man switch. A
failsafe. I guess these people, the military, the company, really wanted to
have live specimens.

I ignore the
infected and make my way down the center aisle. I need to get out of this room
of death but I can’t even see the exit. I keep moving, and in the middle of the
room there are no chains. It’s almost like a clearing in a forest. And right in
the middle of this clearing is what appears to be a massive fish tank. I move
closer and I realize it is not a fish tank. But it is a tank. Multiple tanks.
Maybe nine or ten. The tanks are full of a weird yellow liquid. The liquid
appears to be glowing.

And inside the
tanks are bodies.

One body per
tank.

The bases of the
tanks are lit up with a full array of electronic readings and display screens.

I circumnavigate
the tanks, keeping my distance, mesmerized by the glowing liquid. I was so
mesmerized I almost didn’t see Kim or Doctor Hunter.

I almost tripped
over them.

Both of them are
on their knees, with their hands above their head, handcuffed to a chain
hanging from the ceiling. Doctor Hunter has just the one hand tied above his
head.

Their shoulders
look like they are on the verge of being dislocated.

Kim appears to
be unconscious. But then again, she could be dead.

I run over to
her and shake her. I search for her pulse but I can’t find it.

I put my ear up
to her mouth, and thankfully, I can hear her breathing.

She is alive.

They
are not part of the plan. They do not matter.

I unhook their
handcuffs from the hook attached to the chains. I lay them both on the tiled
floor. They both appear to be unconscious. Although Doctor Hunter’s eyes are
flickering open and shut.

“Did you see?”
Doctor Hunter asks, slurring his speech. “The body.”

“Huh?”

He opens his
eyes and points to one of the tanks with the weird yellow liquid. He is
pointing at a body.

“General
Spears,” he says.

Did
you see the body?

I see it now.
General Spears.

It looks like he
is suspended in mid-air. Suspended in some sort of yellow fluid. Suspended and
frozen in time.

In front of the
tank are the electronic display screens.

They are
displaying his vital signs.

Heart rate.

Body
Temperature.

Heart rate. 30
bpm.

He’s alive.

He’s
still alive.

“Forget him,”
Doctor Hunter says. “He can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt anyone.”

“He’s still
alive,” I say, completely dumbfounded.

“Technically,
yes. But he is not a threat to anyone.”

“Not a threat?”

“He is in a
vegetative state. A death like state.”

“Why is he even
still alive? Who are these other people? What is this?”

“
Cryo
-stasis,” Doctor Hunter answers. “And the reason he is
alive is because the company wants him alive. We are the death squad’s
leverage.”

I look at the
display. “How do I turn it off? How do I kill him?”

“You can’t cut
the power. Not from here. You should forget him. He cannot hurt you anymore.”

“How do I cut
the power? Tell me!”

“There is no
point.”

“Why not?”

“How much time
do you have left?”

I check my
watch. Not long.

Forty minutes.

“You need to
keep moving,” Doctor Hunter says.

I know he is
right and I hate the fact that he is right.

“Who has the
keys for your handcuffs?” I ask.

Doctor Hunter is
rolling his shoulder. “The death squad.”

“Where are
they?”

“Some of them
are hiding,” he says. “Some of them have gone bye-bye.”

“Why are they
hiding?”

“Because they
are scared. Because the company is coming.”

Doctor Hunter
has been slurring his speech. He looks drunk and happy.

“What the hell
did he do to you?”

“He?”

“The man in the
gas mask.”

“Not him. This
is the work of the death squad. They didn’t know where to keep us. So they put
us here and doped us up with a cocktail of sedatives and painkillers. It would
appear Kim has no tolerance. I on the other hand, have developed a tolerance
for painkillers over the past few months.”

Doctor Hunter
has clearly given up and yet he is still alive. Like a parasite.

“That is the
handy work of the man in the gas mask,” he says, pointing to more dead soldiers
scattered under the hanging corpses.

“Who is he?” I
ask. “The man in the gas mask. Who the hell is he?”

Doctor Hunter
bites his lip, like he is nervous. He lowers his head like he is ashamed.

“Tell me!”

He brushes Kim’s
hair out of her face and looks at her with a kind of loving admiration. “He is
a doctor. He was one of us. Together, we could’ve performed miracles. Together,
we did perform miracles. But he had other plans.”

“Wait, he helped
create the Oz virus?”

“Yes.”

“He was part of
your group? He was part of the ‘holy trinity’?”

“Yes. He was the
mastermind. He orchestrated everything. And then he sabotaged everything. We
didn’t know at the time. No one did. No one could’ve known it was him. But it
was him. All along. It was him. Every containment failure. Every single one.
The outbreak. It was him. He wanted to set the virus loose. He wanted the
plague. He made the Oz virus into what it is today. He caused the virus to
mutate uncontrollably, to bring the dead back.”

“Who is he? I
want a name.”

I don’t know why
his name matters so much. But it does. I want a name.

Doctor Hunter
shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. I doubt he has ever told us his real name.
We should never have trusted him.”

“I want a
goddamn name!”

“Which one?”

“What?”

“Doctor Kumar
Singh. Doctor Tariq
Sayid
. Other names that I can’t
remember. Take your pick. He has so many aliases. So many tricks. So much
deception.”

“Why did you
trust him?”

“Because he was
brilliant. Because he is a genius. An unbelievable genius. We would’ve followed
him anywhere. We would’ve done whatever he wanted us to do. The military, the
company would’ve done anything. We were all under his spell. All of us. He was
the puppet master, pulling our strings. We were powerless to stop him.”

And I think to
myself,
I could’ve stopped him
. We
had him locked up in that medical supply closet at the outpost.

I shot him with
a shotgun.

I had two
chances to stop this mass-murdering, genocidal maniac. And I failed both times.

“I could’ve
stopped him,” I whisper to myself.

“No,” Doctor
Hunter says. “No one can stop him. He outsmarted and deceived everyone. All the
research staff. The company. The military. Five star Generals. He deceived
entire governments and regimes. Do not beat yourself up. It was not your fault.
None of this was your fault.”

Together, Doctor
Hunter and I carry an unconscious Kim out of the slaughterhouse. We stick to
the center aisle. We keep our distance from all the hanging bodies.

We enter another
long dark corridor. The lights are flickering on and off.

“Something is
draining the power,” Doctor Hunter says.

“What is it?”

“Don’t know.”

Doctor Hunter
points to an electronic door. “In there.”

Next to the
electronic door is a palm reader. Doctor Hunter is about to place his hand on
the scanner so the door can be opened, but he does not need to.

The door opens.
Magically.

And I know that
somewhere the puppet master is watching us and pulling our strings.

We enter a room
that appears to be some kind of research lab. It is full of computers and
expensive looking technical equipment.

“We’ll be safe
in here,” Doctor Hunter says.

“No we won’t.
Not as long as he is still alive. I need to get Maria. I need to end this.”

Doctor Hunter
moves behind a desk. He types a few commands into a computer and then shows me
the monitor. “You need to see this.”

“What is it?”

“Just look.”

On the computer
screen is a picture of Maria. A current photo. She looks tired. Extremely
malnourished.

Below her photo
is a whole bunch of notes.

Test Subject:
Maria Marsh.

Female.

Sixteen years of
age.

Height: N/A.

Eye color: Blue.